I’ve not seen any TV magic for about six months, and I’m aching for the heady and exciting days of new Endemol pilots that take about six hours to film to write about/slag off. Please do some new shows please thanks. In London. Or Cambridge.
In fact I’m so bored I’ll deploy this interesting gossip which I was going to keep until nearer the time. Someone who I will keep anonymous (unless they want to out themselves, of course) who went to both recording blocks of troubled future BBC2 quiz Perfection suggested that the adjudicators were paying much closer attention to the audience the second time round. That does suggest (alongside the official line that relevant monitors weren’t shielded) that there was some low-rent Major Ingram-esque shenanigans going on, doesn’t it? Or at least a lot of friendly audiences. I am sure we will never truly know.
There will be another iPod review at the weekend.
Oh that’s interesting, Mediaguardian suggest that talks between Endemol and Channel 5 regarding Big Brother have stalled, but they’re having a chat about bringing The Golden Cage to UK screens, which is especially interesting given that I’d presume TGC would cost more to make. In the original Dutch De Goolden Kooi, people live a life of luxury in a mansion but if you leave you’re out. Last one left wins the mansion and associated large cash prize. Could last weeks, could last years, although I think they sped up the Dutch show to end it by introducing mandatory eliminations somewhere down the line so… it also lead to an interesting situation in that you sort of had to bully to encourage people to leave, but obviously that looks and feels quite bad, and producers had to intervene on a number of occasions. The format was sold to ABC in the States in 2007, you’d have thought the “gameplaying” element would have been appealing wouldn’t you?
Apparently US Millionaire is doing well in the ratings, with the new random things working well. Having seen the first episode on YouTube, anyone know if any further episodes are available for watching?
IIRC, didn’t Golden Cage outlast the network it was originally airing on? I believe it was one of Talpa’s first shows, then was folded into RTL once Talpa was bought out…
Yes indeed, part of RTL’s deal to buy up Tien.
Depending on which reference you read, it wasn’t very popular or it did quite well with young viewers, becoming a cult hit. It was getting a viewership of about half a million.
Speaking of Tien: Hey Richard Desmond! Buy up the rights to Die Slimste!
Anyone heard if The Whole 19 Yards and 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow are getting another series? 🙂
If 101 gets another series, I will not watch the BBC for 8 weeks… apart from Waterloo Road and Genius
TW19Y is amazing, but they better get some new games
I think TV’s Paul Brassey suggested there will not be a second series of The Whole 19 Yards, regrettably.
I hope we get proper confirmation from someone at ITV or Venrnon Kay. It was quite a good show and I hope it returns.
101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow was one of the best new gameshows in years, and really does deserve to come back. If they had BAFTAs for Best Gameshow, this would be nominated and almost certainty a favourite to win.
is funny how joe appears not to realise we can see through his endemol routes. NO ONE LIKES 101WTLAG! It got dull midway through its first episode for god sake.
Joe’s allowed to have an opinion, it’s just a shame that this time he picked the wrong one.
Unpopular as I know it will make me, I’m going to have to agree with Joe. Sure, It wasn’t the new Only Connect, but it never claimed to be! What it was, though, was a convenient way of watching people humiliating themselves in vaguely original ways with a half-decent quiz thrown in for good measure.
And with that I now surrender all right I ever had to hold opinions.
I didn’t think it was completely awful by any means but I lost patience with it quickly. The pace was too slow and stunts not all that interesting. I enjoyed its sense of humour though.
If they made it 8 players and cut out the filler crap, then yes, that would be better.
Perhaps a second emergency exit round, but using a pool stunt, I unno.
I still think it would have been better if everyone got dunked except one winner, per round.
And some of the stunts weren’t as dramatic as they promised. Lowering people very slowly on a bungee cord into the water wasn’t that great.
Gravitonas?
Nice to see i’m not the only UK Bard fan, Brig.
Kites is cool, but Religious is amazing!
enjoy
I bloody love Alexander Bard! Nice one.
Just finished watching OC on my generic attached to a satellite dish hard disk recording system + – and feeling rather smug, as I got 3 questions correct at the 5 point mark (admittedly 2 of them were wild slashes in the dark) but – hey, ho. And nice to see The Peelmaster get his name on the wall at last.
Right, is Travis in the Bar tonight? I need his help. Just been onto the Schlag Den Star subsite, and clicked (out of boredom) on the tickets tab. It lists the dates as Fri 29th October and Sat 30th October.
So, I know the new run was pencilled in for 4 Friday nights in Oct/Nov, so, is the first one going out on Pro7 live, and they are recording the rest of the run – or, has the broadcasting schedule changed and they are now broadcasting the show live consecutive Fri/Sat nights?
Cheers..
Schlag den Star is never live. The first series in 2009 was recorded. Although you are seeing two recording dates, they are actually for shows 3 & 4. They are recording the first two shows earlier in that week as Schlag den Raab airs on 23rd October. Schlag den Star will be shown every Friday night, from 29th October at the usual time of 8.15pm. Unlike the main show, SdS features nine games and runs for two hours.
I thank you for giving me a map to follow the straight and narrow on that one Travis.
Let’s hope some nice German decides that the rest of the world should see this, and does the honours on that streaming site I won’t mention at the end of next month…
Very satisfying line-up on Late Night Poker in recent early hours: Dave Colclough! Dave Ulliott, grumbling almost inaudibly about vodka!! And Barny Boatman!!! This is not so much old-school LNP as poker from the University of Paris.
Nngh, I keep forgetting it’s on. Whether I’m not bothered because I’m not playing as much at the moment, or whether I’m not watching as much because of Richard Orford (whom I normally really like), or whether I’m not watching it as much because I feel it’s ruined slightly by Americans who look as though they’ve bigger fish to fry, I don’t know.
I’m really happy to know that Dave Ulliot’s on it, LNP always used to be big on personalities.
Keeping on topic with Stefan Raab. His world dominance continues. The Schalg Den Raab Wii game went straight to number 1 last week, knocking Mario off his perch.
Also, if anybody can access ProSieben or track down a dodgy internet feed, then you can see the annual Bundesvision Song Contest this Friday at 8.15pm, it runs for three hours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesvision_Song_Contest
If I’m around, I’ll point my browser that way..
I wonder if Ms Mayer-Landrut will pitch up as the interval act – and, if they’ll use it as an excuse to reveal which city is to be host of the Die Eurovision next year? (I hear the mutterings of Dussle and Dorf are filling the air of those in that sort of circles at the moment)
Should it get made, The Golden Cage is going to be billed as the new Big Brother, but with one difference. Who goes? They decide. That’ll take some selling.
More difficult, I think, is the show having an obvious beginning, a middle, and an end, but no clear way of getting from the middle to the end in a finite or predictable time. Viewers know that even the longest-running reality shows will come to a conclusion, even Simon Cowell Annnoys only occupies the schedules for four months and you can jump in half-way through and miss little. The Golden Cage? Viewers could be signing up for a project lasting six weeks, six months, two years…
My co-worker’s uncle won some money on a game show broadcast today! To say more would be a spoiler, but I may return to this at a more spoiler-friendly juncture.
Specifically, my co-worker’s uncle and his ex-wife (i.e. co-worker’s uncle’s x-w, not my co-worker’s) won the Pointless jackpot of £6,250 in an episode broadcast about 28 hours ago!
My co-worker knew his uncle had his first try yesterday and that they went out on their first try in the first round. The co-worker also knew that uncle did “a bit better” on their second show, and that there had been a viewing party arranged for the second show. The co-worker also knew that there was a question in the final that people kept rejecting about darts and that his uncle was knowledgeable about darts.
Anyway, we didn’t see the second show live (can’t really watch anything but the news channels during the day shift…) but it turns out they got through to the final, and the darts question was “name a darts world champion” – either BDO, WDC or pre-’94. My co-worker named, without prompting, Jelle Klassen and his uncle agreed. Turned out that was pointless; six and a quarter grand was won and five bottles of champagne were brought out of the kitchen at the viewing party.
Unfortunately they don’t show the other pointless answers when someone wins the jackpot. I was very keen on my answer of John Part, but I guess we’ll never know whether it would have been ponitless or not. (Probably not given that he won again in 2008, but it’d still be good to know.)
Armstrong and Osman were apparently both funny and the whole of the production team were apparently very pleasant.
I reckon John Part would be a low score but then again two people knew Bob Anderson. Funningly, me and my dad knew he won it, so we were probably the two people who knew it 😉
We also had Jelle Klassen as one of our three choices. The other two we chose were John Boy Walton and Tony David. Leighton Rees was also banded about but felt someone in the 100 would know him.
I also had Jelle Klaasen down as a pick. I wonder if the difficulty of the unusual spelling/pronunciation might have put off several people from getting credit for it.
Apparently our Money Drop already taped. We’re calling it the Million Dollar Money Drop because adding Million Dollar before a title makes it awesome. Kevin Pollack, the host of the rigged Our Little Genius, is host. We’ve apparently switched it to 50 stacks of $20,000. We’ve also switched it to 7 questions to win. Most curiously the write up said “Pollack presents contestants with two subjects in which they must answer three multiple choice questions,” so I’m not sure if the audience member lost a lot of blood to the head due to standing or if they switched it again. But hey, no Lifelines like they tried hard to do.
That doesn’t sound too silly – two sets of three questions (four drops for the first set, three drops for the second, all or nothing on question three). 50 bundles would be 25% more faff that we currently have, but I wouldn’t put it past C4/Endemol to do the same when it returns here.
Also: Million Dollar Drop rolls off the tongue, Million Dollar Money Drop sounds really stupid.
It’s 9pm Friday, Manchester MPD auditions are tomorrow. I don’t have calls/email, so I assume I was rejected. OUT OF FEAR.